Another Dreadful Fairy Book

by Jon Etter

  Shade still wasn’t buying it. “Okay, then. Do some unicorn magic.”

  Trudgemore turned to look at Shade, his eyes so wide that the whites showed. He batted his eyelashes at her and whinnied. In spite of herself, Shade found it kind of cute. “Okay, so what was that?” she asked.

  “We unicorns can make most girls and some boys fall in love with us.”

  “I didn’t fall in love with you.”

  “Yeah. Most age out of that once they’re forty-five, fifty seasons old. I can also neutralize poisons, so I’ve got that going for me.”

  “Really? Because it says in Bea L’Eggle’s book, The Penultimate Magical Equine, which is pretty authoritative, that unicorns do that with their horns.”

  “Never heard of this L’Eggle, but I bet they never met an actual unicorn in their life. No, we do it with our spit.”

  “Ew, gross.” Shade made a face.

  “Yeah, we’ll see what you say if I ever have to cure you of a snakebite or make some water drinkable for you.”

  “I’m not letting you spit in my water.”

  “Well, I believe you,” Ginch said, giving Trudgemore a pat. “You’re-a the mulicorn.”

  “Finally.” Trudgemore smiled or at least did the nearest thing to smiling that a mule can manage. “And it’s ‘unicorn.’”

  Ginch grinned benevolently. “You can-a be anything you want as long as you take us to the gold.”

  “Oh, there’s no gold. I just made that up to get out of there.”

  “Fatcha-coota-matchca, mule!”

  “I figured as much,” Shade said. “What about Grigor Byrrower?”

  “Oh, that’s gold—no pun intended.” Ginch gestured rudely at the mule in response. “I really have done a bunch of supply runs. It’s funny—these hills have been pretty dead for years, but suddenly it’s picked way up.”

  “How so?”

  “Somebody’s hired a bunch of the old miners to start digging around the mines again.”

  “How recently?” Shade had an uneasy feeling in her stomach.

  “Hard to say—your average equine doesn’t have a really great sense of time. One thing I can tell you, though, is nobody’s bringing any ore into town. Doesn’t even sound like they’re looking for precious metals—just digging for the sake of digging, if the local ponies are to be believed.”

  “Guys, are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Shade asked.

  “That next time we need a horse we should try harder to find one that is really a cursed nobleman or wizard?” Sir Justinian grumbled.

  “No.”

  “That we should go back and find the card game since we no have the secret treasure to find?”

  “No.”

  The Professor held out a handful of oats toward Shade, who swatted them away.

  “No. Whoever it is that’s been hunting all of us G.L.U.G.ers down—I think they’ve beaten us here and are digging around to find the tomb. I think we could be in very serious danger.”

  Sir Justinian smiled. “Danger? Serious danger?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ha-ha!” Sir Justinian punched the air joyfully. “Yes! We’ll have a chance to look into the grisly maw of death! What say you, my boon companions?”

  Shade sighed and shook her head. The Professor stuck his tongue out and threw a handful of oats at him.

  “I think maybe I’d like to go back to the stable,” Trudgemore muttered.

  “All sales are final,” Shade said. “Maybe a little too final . . . ”

  In which a character’s offer to spit

  is (mercifully) rebuffed . . .

  In spite of her worries about running afoul of her enemies and Trudgemore’s tendency to hum and sing sad songs, Shade was moved by the beauty of the Hollow Hills. Miles and miles of hills stretched out before her, most smoothly rolling from one to the next like great waves on the ocean, others forming tall peaks like wizards’ hats, still others as round as gigantic eggs. Dark caverns, looking like yawning, hungry mouths, gaped at their bases. What surprised and delighted Shade the most, however, were the colors and smells. She had expected lush green grasses to cover the hills, which they did, but she didn’t expect the swaths of pink, purple, orange, and red honeysuckle, the crowds of yellow daisies and daffodils, or the bursts of violet, indigo, and white lilac bushes that painted the hills and perfumed the air.

  “Pretty, ain’t it?” Trudgemore said as he pulled them along a winding dirt path. “The view always did take a little of the sting out of forced servitude.”

  “Well, now that you’re free, maybe you can enjoy the view even more,” Shade said.

  “Yeah, sure feels like I’m free, hauling you folks around. Not that I don’t appreciate the fact that you aren’t whipping me to make me go faster and all.”

  “Don’t worry—we’re not going to keep you. Just get us to where you think Grigor Byrrower’s body might be, then back to town, and you’re free,” Shade said.

  “I’ll believe it when it happens. But for now, I’ll hope you’re playing straight with me and pick up the pace a little.” Trudgemore broke into a trot.

  The cart clattered through the hills as Shade luxuriated in the morning sun and the delicious smells of blooming flowers. Trudgemore eventually pulled them down through a deep valley lined with pine and spruce trees where a small waterfall splashed into a crystal clear pool of water. He took them to the pool’s edge. “Here we are,” he announced.

  The fairies climbed out of the cart. “Is this water safe to drink?” Shade asked.

  “Should be as sweet and wholesome as Grandma Molly’s apple crumble,” Trudgemore declared. “Want me to spit in it to be on the safe side?”

  “No.”

  Sir Justinian looked around expectantly. “We came not here for refreshment, good unicorn. We came in search of adventure.”

  “We came in search of a book,” Shade clarified.

  “I was a-hoping for the hidden gold, but the mule lie to us,” Ginch complained. “Fatcha-coota-matchca, mule.”

  “First, thanks for acknowledging that I’m a unicorn, Mr. Knight. Not enough people are polite enough to do so.” Trudgemore paused to glare at Ginch. “Second, look behind the waterfall. One of the old-timers—a really sweet pony named Zerelda—told me when I was just a foal about how she used to work for this crazy old coblynau named Grigor right up until he died and passed her on to this couple of coblynau he was friends with. He’d have her graze a couple hills over so’s nobody would know where he lived.”

  “It’s here!” Sir Justinian shouted happily from behind the waterfall. “It’s here and it’s glorious!”

  “You might want to tell him to keep it down a little,” Trudgemore said as Sir Justinian’s cries echoed throughout the valley. “Those people digging up the old tunnels that you were worried about? They’re working the surrounding hills. Haven’t hit this one as far as I know.”

  “Hey, Sir Justinian!” Ginch yelled as the Professor took out a pair of cymbals and smashed them together. “The mulicorn says to quiet down!”

  “Come see, my good fellows! Come see!” Sir Justinian shouted, undeterred.

  Shade unhooked Trudgemore from the cart and patted him on the nose. “Wait here for a little bit. We’ll be back as soon as we get our book.”

  “Good luck. If I don’t see you by night, I’ll just assume you’re dead and go on my way.” Trudgemore started singing lowly to himself. “Oh, the roads run long, and the winds blow cold, and the moon hides her face in all her shame . . . ”

  Shade walked gingerly along the rocky ledge that ran behind the waterfall. There a mine shaft gaped, leading into the hill. A breeze blew out from its black depths, chilling Shade as she read the sign that had been driven into the loose gravel at its mouth: “Danger! Keep Out!” At the foot of the sign was a pile of yellowed bones with a cracked skull on top.

  “Now this appears to be a challenge worthy of a knight errant,” Si
r Justinian said, taking one of a pair of unlit torches that hung on each side of the cave entrance. “Good Professor, have you something to light this torch?”

  The Professor nodded and pulled a smoldering cigar from his pants pocket, gave it a few puffs to make the end glow orange, made a disgusted face, and lit the torch with the end. He did the same to the other torch for Shade. Then he pulled a lantern out of a pocket and lit it for Ginch, and then finally took a lit candle out from inside his jacket and began walking into the depths of the cave.

  Shade gazed around as they made their way into the hill, winding their way along the underground tunnel. Water trickled down the rough-hewn, dark gray stone walls, which were reinforced by rotted, worm-eaten wooden beams. She reached out to test the strength of one; the part she grabbed crumbled easily in her hand. “That doesn’t inspire confidence,” she muttered.

  The Professor gave a whistle. They had reached a fork in the tunnel. He squatted down and inspected the ground. The right branch was wider and the ground there was worn smooth; the left, narrower, its ground rougher, had no wooden support beams to reinforce the walls or ceiling. The Professor pointed to the right and started to walk but Shade grabbed his coat and yanked him back.

  “No,” she said. “The left. Think about it—if this Grigor guy was a crazy security freak, he’d probably hole up and hide his book in a less-used passage. We should also be on the lookout for traps.”

  “A shrewd thought, good sprite.” Sir Justinian began to push his way past the others. “Allow me to lead the way, for I—”

  “No,” she said. “If this were a fight, I’d put you in the front. In fact, if we’re going to get attacked, which has happened a couple times already, it would probably be from behind, so you should bring up the rear.”

  Sir Justinian nodded and drew his sword. Ginch chuckled and nudged the Professor. “She said ‘rear.’”

  Shade rolled her eyes. “Professor, you lead the way.”

  The Professor’s finger shot immediately to the tip of his nose. “He says-a the not it,” Ginch explained.

  Shade grabbed the Professor and shoved him toward the tunnel. “Come on, pixie-pants. You’re the quickest on your feet—” The Professor nodded and broke into a quick jig at this. “—so you should go first. You’d have the best chance of dodging anything that we might accidentally trigger. Don’t worry—you’ll be fine. Just be careful.”

  The Professor gave a thumbs-up and began skipping ahead of them carelessly, whistling as he went. “He’s-a my partner, so if he dies, I call the dibs on his stuff,” Ginch said, following after him. “Hey partner, slow down. I no wanna go too far to find-a you body, eh!”

  In which our characters encounter

  mostly family-friendly peril . . .

  Their footsteps echoed in the tunnel. Torchlight flickered. The tunnel began to gradually widen and the four spread out, with Ginch joining the Professor in the lead and Sir Justinian and Shade a few steps behind. Shade scanned the passageway.

  “This reminds me of one of my books growing up: Sultan Suleiman’s Mines. This adventurer goes looking for lost treasure, and there are all sorts of traps like—hold on! Don’t anybody move!” She held her torch over toward the wall. There she saw holes: rows and rows of holes with three-inch spaces between them starting about a foot off the ground and reaching up almost as high as the ceiling.

  Ginch squinted at the wall. “What? The mine, it’s gotta the termites?”

  “No. There was something like this in the book. Somebody kicks a trip wire and a bunch of arrows shoot out. See how the holes in the—” As Shade stepped back to better point out the holes to the others, the rock under her foot sank down and she heard a soft click. “Everybody get down!”

  Shade dropped to the floor and covered her head. There was a whoosh of air and an odd bubbling sound. She looked up and saw jets of bubbles flying out of the holes. The Professor sprang to his feet, smiling and clapping, bubbles flying around him. The others stood up as well.

  “An odd form of trap,” Sir Justinian said as the bubble jets abruptly stopped. He leaned in to regard one of the holes. “Not a terribly effective security measure, in my opinion.”

  Shade scratched her head and looked at the wall while the Professor bent down and pushed on a stone. “Yeah. Why would you—pft!” A stream of bubbles flew directly into her face. “Knock it off, Professor!”

  The Professor, undeterred, pushed the stone down several more times, filling the tunnel with bubbles. As they popped, he walked further down and then stomped on another stone. Bubbles again jetted out. He pointed at the wall, his mouth open in a silent laugh, clapped his hands, and stomped around, trying to find another trigger stone. With a loud “chunk” he found one a little further along the tunnel, only this time a volley of arrows came swishing out to clatter against the opposite wall, narrowly missing the capering pixie save for one that swept the hat right off his head.

  “Professor!” Ginch lunged forward and grabbed him. “You okay?”

  The Professor picked up his hat and put it back on, an arrow now sticking through it. He nodded.

  Ginch gave him a hug and then shoved him. “Whatta you do, eh? Always you gotta play around.” The Professor nodded and took out a paddleball and started smacking the little rubber ball in the air until Ginch slapped it from his hands. “No more! You gotta be careful!”

  Sir Justinian walked past them and regarded the wall where the arrows had come out, looking impressed and pleased. “Now this is more what I was expecting. But why not start with—I know! The bubbles must be there to lull intruders into a false sense of security and then—thwock!—the arrows hit them completely by surprise. Ingenious!”

  “Sure worked that way with the Professor, but I don’t know . . . ” Sir Justinian’s theory made sense to Shade, but it just didn’t feel right. It definitely wasn’t the sort of thing that she had read in any book, and it seemed to her that that’s how a book guardian would approach things—by the book. That was how she usually did things, after all.

  The four continued more carefully than before. The tunnel rose and fell, twisted and turned, as they went deeper and deeper. As they walked, dust fell from the ceiling above, and pebbles sometimes tumbled from the wall to clatter in the gloom.

  In time the tunnel opened up into a cavern, its ceiling so high that the light from their torches, lantern, and candle couldn’t penetrate its darkness, but Shade could hear squeaks and a slight rustling of leathery wings from its depths. Milk-white stalagmites jutted up from the floor like jagged teeth in a giant mouth ready to chew up Shade and her friends. They wound their way through the jutting rocks and splashed through the puddles of the cavern until they came to a deep pit, stretching from wall to wall, at least fifty feet wide and fifty feet across. Sagging in the middle of it was a rickety bridge, its ropes fraying, its planks splintering. The four looked down but saw nothing but darkness.

  “I wonder how deep it is and what’s at the bottom,” Shade said.

  The Professor shrugged and dropped his candle. It stayed lit just long enough for them to catch a glimpse of a great mass of long, narrow, shiny, twisted shapes around thirty feet below. Shade thought she heard an annoyed hiss when the candle reached the bottom.

  “Snakes?” Ginch shook his head and waved his hands. “Oh, no! I’m-a done. You go if you want but I’m-a go back because I no can-a deal with the slither and the hiss and the bite and . . . and . . . ugh! Fatcha-coota-matchca, snakes!”

  Sir Justinian, meanwhile, had begun yanking at the posts, stakes, and ropes of the bridge. “Do not lose heart, Signore Ginch. The bridge, though old, seems sound.”

  “Hold on,” Shade said and flew to the other side, taking care not to look down into the pit for she, while not as unnerved by snakes as Ginch, had no desire to look down and see a giant pit filled with them. She alighted on the other side and tested the posts and ropes. “They seem okay on this side too.”

  “The
re, you see? ’Tis perfectly safe, Signore Ginch.”

  “It’s-a safe, eh?” Ginch frowned and looked at Sir Justinian. “Fine—you cross it.”

  “Excellent idea, good signore! If it can hold my weight, then we will know it’s safe. Allow me to brave this Pit of Eternal Peril—”

  “That’s-a what we call it?” Ginch asked.

  “Why are we naming it?” Shade called out. “And it’s not ‘eternal.’ It only goes down about—”

  “I shall brave the Pit of Eternal Peril,” Sir Justinian continued, undaunted by his much less chivalrous companions who, unlike myself, seemed to have no appreciation for dramatic flair, “and be the first to face that which lies beyond!”

  Shade gave a little wave. “Um, hello, I’m already on the other side.”

  “Watch and bear witness, my friends.” Sir Justinian then, without hesitation or fear, heroically stepped onto the bridge. The planks creaked and cracked under his feet and strands of old brittle hemp strained and snapped as the ropes pulled taut under his weight, but the ancient bridge held. Sir Justinian slowly but confidently walked out to the middle of the bridge, one hand on the ropes, one hand holding his torch aloft. He turned around to face Ginch and the Professor. “See? ’Tis strong and sound as stone.”

  At that exact moment, Shade spotted movement high up. There, swinging down from the ceiling, was an immense and very sharp-looking blade. “Sir Justinian, look out!”

  The good knight sprang back and narrowly missed being cut in two by the razor-sharp scythe that swung past. What was cut in two, however, was the bridge he stood on, plunging him into the pit.

  Shade, without thinking, dived in to try to save her friend. It was a noble gesture but a foolish one, for his much greater weight would have dragged her down with him. But she wasn’t fast enough and she watched in horror as her friend fell down, down, and disappeared in the snaky shadows below . . . and then watched in surprise as he came flying back up, arms and legs flailing, snakes sailing up all around him. She fluttered back just in time to avoid having Sir Justinian smash into her as he shot up past her. As he did, however, a shower of snakes rained up on Shade. She shrieked and swatted them off as Sir Justinian fell past her again, then shot back up again, this time laughing heartily as snakes again pelted Shade in his wake.